Grand ReOpening Day at Alcatel-Lucent branch

Today we're celebrating the Grand Re-Opening of our branch in the Indian Hill building at Lucent. We made some changes to the interior, so we thought it was a good excuse to serve punch and cookies to our friends at Alcatel-Lucent! After all, our relationship with Alcatel-Lucent goes way back to our founding days at Western Electric's Hawthorne Works Plant in Cicero. The Hawthorne Works plant manufactured telephones and telephone wires and a group of Western Electric employees started the credit union in 1935 by pooling their money to save with each other and make small loans to each other during the Great Depression.


To make a long story short...years later after the plant closed, a portion of the business was sold to another phone company and it moved out to Naperville. Hawthorne Credit Union moved with it.

Kudos to Claudia

It is not very often that a member tracks down our Sales & Service Manager to give a compliment about one of our employees. But that's exactly what happened this week.

This gentleman has been a member since the early days of our credit union when it was housed at at Western Electric's Hawthorne Works Plant in Cicero (which closed down in the mid-80s, so this is a long term member!) He said he has always been happy with our service (when he said that she got a little nervous, waiting for the big BUT that usually follows a comment like that...).

He told her that he had the great pleasure of having Claudia help him today with his account, which he had a few questions about. He said that Claudia was very pleasant and didn’t make him feel as if his questions were a bother. He was very happy to work with her and wanted to make sure she was recognized for being so helpful.

Great Job, Claudia!! She is a great asset to Hawthorne, and always has a great big smile on her face.